Two Dissertations · §57 · John Davenant

Cap. 5 Mem. 2 Fathers close: Actual reconciliation needs the receiver’s consent

From orthodox antiquity, therefore, they have departed who state that by the very passion of Christ all human beings are placed in the state of grace; nor less those who teach that the predestinate themselves, in this death of Christ, obtained the remission of their sins, or justification and reconciliation with God, from eternity — since this justification or actual reconciliation (as Bernard truly and skillfully) cannot belong to the receiver without consent any more than without the grace of the giver.

And thus you have received our sentence confirmed, and the contrary enervated.

Latin

Ab orthodoxa ergo antiquitate desciverunt, qui statuunt ipsa passione Christi omnes homines in statum gratiae repositos; nec minus illi, qui docent ipsos praedestinatos in hac morte Christi consecutos remissionem peccatorum suorum, sive justificationem & reconciliationem cum Deo, ab aeterno: cum haec justificatio sive actualis reconciliatio (ut vere & scite Bernardus) tam absque consensu non potest esse recipientis, quam absque gratia dantis. Atque sic accepistis sententiam nostram confirmatam, atque enervatam contrariam.

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About this text

John Davenant argues from Scripture that Christ's death is a remedy offered to every person, so that anyone who hears the Gospel may be called to believe, and then opens a second dissertation on predestination.

John Davenant (1572–1641) was Lady Margaret Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, bishop of Salisbury from 1621, and England's leading delegate to the Synod of Dort. A Reformed theologian of the moderate school, he defended universal atonement language within a Calvinist frame.

The Two Dissertations (1650) press two theses: that Christ died sufficiently for all, and that God sincerely calls all who hear the gospel — against the novel claim that Christ died only for the elect in every sense. They are Davenant's mature statement of the hypothetical-universalist position that divided English Calvinists.

This volume covers the opening of the first dissertation through the close of chapter 3, with the theses on the extent of Christ's death.

Date1572–1641 AD (Bishop of Salisbury; 1650 Cambridge imprint)

The 1683 reprint was not used as base text. No modern English was copied.

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